The Universe in Our Minds
Laura Liu
Have you ever made your own universe story?
Sure, everyone can simply look to the Greeks for a cranky cast of characters. The Bible is certainly beautiful and very allegorical. Chinese mythology is a nice fit for anyone who fancies a giant man-god wielding a XXXL size axe. Maybe you wanted to be silly but also a little sciency, say… A certain little boy was playing with a stone. One day, he dropped that stone and that was the big bang. Every universe contains an infinite number of universes.
No one can prove you wrong.
Or maybe you had trouble falling asleep because you made the bad decision of drinking a cup of coffee at midnight. You’ve been studying Shakespeare’s “everyone dies, that’s the end!” tragedies in school and the poetry and symbolism and all that Shakespeare stuff is getting to you.
My mind is full of strange and weird ideas,
Carried on billowing waves of caffeine.
And so you begin to make a story in your head of how time is a lady with flowy silver hair (because if time had hair it would be silver and flowy), riding a black horse with a white diamond on its forehead (because everyone loves Black Beauty), and as she rides forward time passes (because obviously time only goes forward, no matter how much everyone wishes otherwise). Maybe you run track and that race track is turning your thoughts circular. You think: every time Ms.Time gets back to the starting point the universe starts over again. 12
